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On Remembrance Day, a day when we honour the fallen who gave their lives for our freedom, the Woman of the Day can only be “The Poppy Lady from France”, teacher and humanitarian Anna Guérin (1878-1961) from Ardeche. She campaigned for all WW1 Allied Countries to use poppies made by French widows and orphans as a symbol of remembrance and to raise money for the families of the fallen and those who had survived. In 1911, Anna was living with her family in England and delivering lectures on behalf of the Alliance Française, an international organisation that promotes French culture and language. Soon after Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, she left Liverpool on the Lusitania bound for New York. While delivering lectures to American audiences on behalf of the Alliance Française, she quietly raised funds at the end of each lecture for those made destitute by war, sending all donations directly to the American Red Cross. Once the USA entered the war, Anna was free to raise funds openly. She returned to France each summer throughout the war and was halfway across the Atlantic at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918: Armistice Day. In 1915, Canadian surgeon Lt Colonel John McCrae had famously written “We shall not sleep, though poppies grow, in Flanders fields”, which inspired Moina Michael of Georgia to persuade the American Legion Auxiliary to adopt the poppy as their symbol in 1921 but Anna had already started promoting the poppy as the symbol of Remembrance two years before after the French government formed "La Ligule des enfants de France et d'Amerique" with the poppy as its emblem and asked her to travel to the USA to form the American branch. From 1919, Anna raised funds for the war orphans of France by holding Poppy Days in every American state she visited, distributing paper poppies in exchange for donations. Women and girls wearing sashes bearing the words "In Flanders Fields the poppies grow” sold them. It was then that Anna devised a plan for holding an Inter-Allied Poppy Day, a day when all WW1 Allied countries could use poppies as a symbol of remembrance and to raise humanitarian funds. The USA decided to go its own way and follow the American model so Anna turned her attention to the Commonwealth, starting with Canada and Newfoundland (not part of Canada then). Both signed up to her idea so she travelled to the UK, arriving in Liverpool in August 1921. Anna brought samples of her French-made poppies to the British Legion and offered to fund the manufacture of a million poppies in France, an offer the British Legion accepted. She also persuaded the Legion of the value of recruiting women as volunteers to form a distribution and collection network. Australia and New Zealand followed suit and the Inter-Allied Poppy Day became established. When Earl Haig announced in October 1921 that 11 November would be known as Remembrance Day or Poppy Day, the British Legion contributed a further eight million poppies made in Britain to Anna’s one million French poppies. All nine million poppies sold. Today, over 45 million poppies are distributed by the British Legion in the UK and many more are created at home by volunteers for civic remembrance displays. #LestWeForget